Welcome to my blog---an eyes-open, no-holds-barred exploration of Western and Eastern spirituality, mindfulness, philosophy and literature. A member of the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association, I lectured at the NSW Institute of Psychiatry to mental health workers for 14 years and at the University of Technology, Sydney to law students for 16 years. My interests include metaphysics, the psychology of religion, transformative ritual, mythology and addiction recovery.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

A
young man approached his master and asked, 'How long is it likely to take me to
attain enlightenment?'

'Ten
years,' replied the master.

'That
long?' exclaimed the young man.

'No,
that was a mistake on my part,' said the master. 'It will take you twenty years.'

'Why
did you just double the figure?' asked the young man.

'Alright,
in your case it will probably take you thirty years,' replied the master.

Seeking enlightenment on Mount Takao (Takaosan)Photo taken by the author in Meiji-no-mori Takao Quasi-National Park, Japan

Never
ask ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions, at least not when it comes to matters spiritual.
Worse still, never ask ‘how long’ questions, because when you do you are still
thinking in terms of time. Enlightenment---true wisdom---is not of time. It is timeless. It is
eternal. And eternity is now---the
eternal now. Enlightenment is above time and has no opposite. The state that is
eternal is---right now! We live in both time and eternity right now. However,
thought (‘how’, ‘why’, ‘how long’) is time itself. We think in time, but thought
can never understand ‘something’ that is above and beyond time. That something
is wisdom or enlightenment. It can be experienced, but never known or grasped
or arrived at.

What,
then, is enlightenment? It means waking
up---not just once, but staying awake
from moment to moment. As such, enlightenment is not so much a destination but
the journey. It is also the means of travel. Yes, it is the means and the end.Enlightenment
is not a ‘thing-in-itself’. Indeed, it is actually a ‘no-thing’---no-thing-ness. It is the complete
absence of thought, conditioning, materialism and all other limitations of time and space. It is living
with choiceless, unadorned awareness. Yes, enlightenment is mindful living. In that regard, I am reminded of what Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, and founder of the Stress
Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and
Society, at theUniversity
of Massachusetts Medical School, had to say about mindfulness. He said, ‘Mindfulness is about falling awake rather than asleep.’ Falling awake. Yes, and also staying awake. That is mindfulness. And that is enlightenment.

A disciple once asked his master, ‘What is the path?’ The Zen master replied, ‘Walk on!’ Yes, the ‘meaning’ of life lies in the living---that is, the ‘walking’---of life from one moment to the next. Enlightenment is staying awake while you are walking your path.So,
don’t ask ‘how long’. Instead, ask yourself this question, ‘What is standing in
the way of my waking up and experiencing enlightenment right now?’

Monday, June 22, 2015

OK,
so there is no ‘secret’ as such, but it is true that very few people know how
to live mindfully. Here’s a story from Buddhism. The story may well be
apocryphal, but the advice certainly sounds like it came from the historical
Buddha.

It
is written that a philosopher once said to the Buddha, ‘I have heard tell of
Buddhism as a doctrine of enlightenment. What is its method? In other words,
what do you do every day?’

Before
I tell you what the Buddha said, I want to make two comments. First, Buddhism does
indeed teach enlightenment, which means---wait for it---waking up. Buddhism
teaches us how to ‘wake up’ and stay awake. (No, I am not talking about
insomnia.) Secondly, Buddhism does not teach a ‘method’ or ‘technique’, for
methods and techniques are forms of mental conditioning. Buddhism is all about
deconditioning the mind. It’s about letting go of anything and everything that holds us back from
happiness and wellness.

Now,
what was the Buddha’s answer to the philosopher’s question, ‘What do Buddhists
do every day?’

‘We
walk, we eat, we wash ourselves, we sit down …,’ said the Buddha.

‘But
what is there that’s special in that?’ replied the philosopher. ‘Everyone
walks, eats, washes himself, sits down . . .’

‘Sir, with us there is a difference. When we walk, we are aware of the fact that we are walking.
When we eat, we are aware of the fact that we are eating, and so on. When others walk,
eat, wash themselves, or sit down, they are not aware of what they are doing.’

There
you have it---AWARENESS. The secret or key to living mindfully is ... to live with AWARENESS. Yes, it's that simple ... but it isn't all that easy. It takes lots of practice ... every day ... and each and every minute and moment of the day.

I just thought of another little story from Buddhism that's on the same point. It’s a gem. The South Korean Zen master Seung Sahn (pictured right) would say, ‘When you
eat, just eat. When you read the newspaper, just read the newspaper. Don't do
anything other than what you are doing.’

One
day a student saw Seung Sahn reading the newspaper while he was eating. The
student asked if this did not contradict his teaching. Seung Sahn said, ‘When
you eat and read the newspaper, just eat and read the newspaper.’

The
point of both of these stories is this. Whatever you do, whatever you are
doing, do it with focused and undivided attention---that is, awareness. That,
my friends, is the ‘secret’ to living mindfully.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

There once was a
famous Persian Sufi mystic of the 9th century named Bayazid Bastami (pictured left). It is said that before he passed away he was
asked about his age. ‘I am 4 years old,’ Bastami purportedly said. ‘For 70
years I was veiled. I got rid of my veils only 4 fours years ago.’ So, there is
hope for you and me.

Bastami would often
talk about the importance of awareness. On one particular occasion, after he
had been asked the question, ‘Well, what exactly is awareness?’, it is said
that Bastami led the questioner and those with him to a river. Now, on the near
side of the river was a small hill, and on the other side there was also a
small hill. Bastami said, ‘We are going to put up a long wooden bridge---just
one foot (0.305 m) wide---from this
end to the other, and you will have to walk on it. And then you will know what
awareness is.’

The person who asked
the question of Bastami as to what was awareness was not exactly happy with
Bastami’s response. He said, ‘But we have been walking our whole life, and we
have never come to know.’

Bastami said, ‘Wait,’
and he did the experiment. Many of them started feeling very afraid, and they
said, ‘We cannot walk. Just one foot wide?’

‘But how much do you
need to walk on?’, asked Bastami. ‘When you are walking on the earth, you can
walk on a one-foot wide strip easily. Why, then, can’t you walk on a one-foot wide
strip hanging between two hills? What is holding you back?’

A few people tried
the experiment. Well, they ventured along the bridge a couple of feet, but no
more than that. They quickly returned to the near side of the river. ‘It is too
dangerous,’ they said to Bastami.

A man walks over a plank bridge between the towers of thecathedral in Bremen, Germany. Photograph: Joerg Sarbach/AP.

Then Bastami walked
and a few followed him. When they reached the other side of the river, they
said to Bastami, ‘Master, now we know what awareness is. The danger was such that
we could not afford to walk in unawareness. We had to be alert. At any moment
we could have been gone forever, so we had to keep alert.’

Fortunately, we are
not called upon to undergo ‘experiments’ of that kind all that often, but the
degree of awareness required for such an experiment is nevertheless the
intensity of awareness that we ought to possess and use in our ordinary, daily
lives. I kid you not. The awareness of which I speak is not concentration as
that word is ordinarily used. No, true awareness is conscious wakefulness that
is ‘choiceless’ and unadorned. That means a pure, unadulterated awareness and
observation where the cognitive mind is totally at rest, that is, not thinking,
analysing, judging, interpreting or comparing. It is pure consciousness without
any thought. As Krishnamurti used to say, you and the object of awareness
become one.

Now, why not try
this experiment. No, I am not talking about you walking a tightrope or anything
as dangerous as that. You can do this experiment anywhere. So, when to walk along
the sidewalk, or down the hall of your home, walk as if each moment there is
danger. Don’t try to visualize any particular danger ahead or around you---that
is thinking---just focus your undivided, unadorned attention and awareness on
what you are doing and the path you are walking step by step.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

A belief is a mental construct together with an emotional acceptance that
something exists or is true where the matter believed is one without proof. In many cases, no proof of the truth or
otherwise of the matter believed is possible. Ordinarily, that which is
believed is in the nature of something that is hoped for or expected or simply promised
by others.

All that I have just said is certainly the case with almost all
religious beliefs---where rigorous proof is impossible---but I am not
restricting myself to only religious beliefs. Many other types of beliefs are
incapable of proof, such as beliefs based purely on racial, cultural, political,
tribal and nationalistic grounds. Etymologically, the word ‘believe’ means to hold dear, valuable, or satisfactory’ and ‘to approve
of’. Yes, we tend to believe that which we hold dear and value, and that of
which we approve. Funny, that. It’s so very true, isn’t it?

Now, there is nothing wrong with affirmations and convictions that are
supported by and grounded in facts that are sufficiently probative to support
the affirmation or conviction in question, but to believe something without
proof … now that is downright silly
and even dangerous!

Yes, beliefs are bad
things. Very bad things. Here’s why:

1.Beliefs divide and separate people. They never unite. More than
any other thing (eg race, skin colour, ethnicity, nationality) beliefs create
deep divisions and separate people one from the other, creating conflict and antagonism in their wake. Catholics are separated from Baptists. Muslims are
separated from Jews and Buddhists. Communists are
separated from believers in capitalism. With
separation and division comes conflict, turmoil, strife and fear (itself the foundation of belief). Beliefs can never unite because one person or group of persons believes
one thing, and another person or group of persons some other thing. We can never be one family of humanity while there are different belief-systems that divide us so hopelessly.

2.Beliefs prevent knowledge and understanding. We believe when we don’t
know or understand something. If we know something to be true there is no need
to believe it. So, the important thing for us is to know and understand, and
when we do not know something it is inappropriate to accept it on faith.

3.Beliefs fetter
and cage the mind. Beliefs, by their very nature, take the form of
second or third-hand prejudices, or biases, of various kinds. Beliefs stifle
original thought and critical thinking. They prevent freedom of thought and encourage mental
laziness. Beliefs, being largely impervious to reason and facts, are a form of collective thinking and conditioning, and in
such a conditioned state of mind, there is no ability to think freely. Eventually,
even the desire to think freely is lost. Any 'true' (ha!) believer is
constantly exhorted by those in authority to believe more deeply and fully, to
have more faith. The result? You build a bigger cage---or prison---for your
brain and thus for yourself.

4.Beliefs make
us sick—spiritually sick, and perhaps in other ways as well. Since every belief
is some other person or group’s collective thinking and conditioning, when we
believe we take onboard that other person or group’s thinking and conditioning.
This is a pernicious form of mind control. The result? An infected mind. Beliefs are almost always based on fear---for example, fear of loneliness and isolation, fear of emptiness and insecurity, fear of existential annihilation, or fear of eternal damnation.

5.Beliefs lock
us into the past. Beliefs are conditioning, and conditioning is a product of
the past. Beliefs
are also the result of memory. They are inherently reactionary, as are the narrative and worldview created by beliefs. There is a happening
or an occurrence, and belief immediately sets to work to formulate our reaction
to that happening or occurrence. When we take on a belief
system, we cease to be choicelessly aware of life as it unfolds from one moment
to the next. We remain locked into the past, and other people’s ways of
thinking.

6.Beliefs
distort our understanding of reality. When we believe something about some
aspect of reality, a thought covering or veil is placed between us and reality,
blocking off the latter. Using a different metaphor, beliefs are like
distorting lenses which filter and distort reality as it tries to pass through
the lens.

‘There is hope
for whoever does not know what to believe. Human belief is a combination of
superstition, gullibility and mental laziness.We need not believe
anything; we need to find, to see, to know.’

Those words come from the American
spiritual teacher Vernon Howard [pictured left]. Got that. We need to find, see, and know. And
I might add to that three—understand. When you know and understand, there is
absolutely no need to believe.

In my own search
for truth---actually, there is no need to search for truth, for truth
is all that is---I came to a point where I gave up all my beliefs. It wasn’t an
easy thing to do, and it took place over time. When I gave up all beliefs—religious,
political, and all the rest---I experienced a great joy and a sense of freedom
that I have never experienced before. I affirm the truth of certain propositions, most of which are in the nature of
self-evident truths. There is no need to believe that which is true, for that
which is true is true whether or not I believe it to be true, and the truth would
not become any truer if I were to believe it to be true. I now live with reason and also with what Bertrand Russell called 'liberating doubt,' and it is so much better than living with beliefs.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Back pain--and, in particular, low back pain--has
been said to be the single leading cause of disability worldwide. As many as 80
per cent of the population will experience a back problem at some time in their
lives. In addition, about 50 per cent of all working Americans admit to having
back pain symptoms each year, and that figure seems to hold good for most other
Western nations as well.

Back pain is one of the most common reasons for
missed work. In fact, back pain is the second most common reason for visits to
the doctor’s office, outnumbered only by upper respiratory tract infections. I
have read that Americans spend more than $50 billion each year on back pain—and
that’s just for the more easily identified costs.

This may well be the best news many back pain sufferers have had for some time.

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